So it’s over. We are at the opposite edge of the Western Sahara. We made it. We crossed it all while it left a trace on this trip and in our hearts.

It was good to spend 10days in the desert. I didn’t expect it so beautiful and alive. Yes, the Sahara is full of life and of people and stories to be shared.

In Dakla we overnight on the beach for two nights. Dakhla is called “the windsurf paradise “ as we discovered later, and, except for the caravans of French who have been following us everywhere since we entered Africa and that we found even in the more unreachable places, it was an overall gorgeous experience. On the last night a local windsurfer, Manshur, and his friends shared his fried fish dinner with us and invited us to have some tea in their Bedouin tend on the ocean. It was a great night. The tend was so big that could fit almost all of us. It was a great night of friendship and communication. We shared an amazing moment and those strangers offered us a memory forever.

Nouqnchkott market

Mashur taught us the meaning of the Arabian tea and how to prepare it. The Arabian tea is a long process that is resumed in super sugary shots served in small glasses and in three times. It has all to do with the preparation, that can take hours if shared with people. Water is put to boil in kettle kettles, then the tea is added and rock sugar in exaggerating quantities. If when you try the tea for the first time you wonder how sweet it is, it’s when you see the preparation that you understand why. The tea is then poured from one glass to another to get it mixed wit the sugar and the final result is a small glass of sweet infusion that you cannot avoid to love and get addicted to. It’s part of the daily life around here and a ritual with the strangers, both for Moroccan and Mauritanian people.

Mauritania has been so far a great surprise. Before getting here none of us knew what to expect and it sounded like a dangerous and unfriendly place to try to get out from, as soon as possible. Well, we are exiting it today and we are all sad for this. A week more here would have been good. This country and his humility to be itself, in its beauty and has touched us lot. “I would have loved to stay longer”, said Jon yesteray night, and this was a shared feeling.

Even in the capital, Nouachkott, that is far away from being called a charming place, the atmosphere was so good that we all felt treated good. It has been here that for the first time we really felt the 35 degrees that are going to be a standard temperature from now on. At night the breeze was fresh and, after buying a mosquito net, I slept for the first time on this trip outside, on the roof top of the hostel where we stayed.

At the hotel, we met an Italian guy, expert of precious ancient blitz, who accompanied us to the market. If you really want to know the heart of a place around here, you need to visit the market.

In Nouanchkott the market is different from the ones seen so far. It’s open air, not covered or narrow like the Moroccan ones, and it spreads all around the area, so that it’s very difficult to get oriented. Infact, we immediately lost most of the group as soon as we got there and then we lost ourselves in the mesmerizing colours and shapes of curtains and carpets, pipes and stones all around. Negotiation here is a talent and a form of art, and with Carlo I got how it really works. The guys wanted to buy some pipes and we came back to the same place at least 3 times to get the price lowered. It usually takes time, it has its own rules and minutes, it’s made of sights and hand shakes and it is kind of a art that presumes a deep knowledge of it in order to be successful. It was fun to watch the whole negotiation and how much this culture is based on the human interconnection and exchange. As for the tea, negotiation here is a ritual as well.

Despite the lack of attractions, due to the fact that Nouachkott is pretty new and modern, it’s only 50 years old, it was a peasant stay to regenerate, absorb the heat and get ready to Senegal. It was not dangerous, neither dodgy, but a great stopover to realize where we finally are.